Sport and class and stuff

Social mobility has been declining, most people would admit for some time.

. The interesting thing is, as class divisions have been re-entrenched, our collective ability to recognise class, especially class-for-itself, for what it is has taken a battering. When Nick Clegg is considered a communist, David Cameron says he's middle-class, and Ed Miliband stands for the squeezed middle (whatever that is, perhaps it’s something to do with toothpaste) then you know we’re in trouble.

We’ve talked a lot about how the popular culture industry, especially pop music, is increasingly becoming an upper-class paid vacation, and the worse for it. An interesting article in today’s Graun: though only 7% of the population attend private, fee-paying schools, roughly one quarter of the British Olympic team is drawn from those schools   . Further:

It is the same with many non-Olympic sports. Of the England cricket squad chosen to play this week's Test match, all seven batsmen, including two reared in South Africa, and one of the six bowlers (who do the harder work and are, therefore, traditionally drawn from plebeian backgrounds) were privately educated.

The writer’s reasoning?

Cricket, rugby and most Olympic sports, have been professionalised beyond recognition. All sports now aim to identify talent early, give it intensive practice and coaching, eradicate technical deficiencies, and encourage (not always successfully) the right diet, lifestyle and mental discipline. Sport has become an industry, using scientific techniques to enhance performance. The opportunities for raw, untutored talent are correspondingly fewer. The fee-charging schools, with their lavish facilities and full-time professional coaches (many schools employ former first-class county cricket players), were in pole position to prepare their pupils for the new era.

There is a significant paradox here. As sports became more professional – and no longer the preserve of those who could afford to play for fun – the social base of the top performers was expected to widen.

It is similar to the contradictory fact that as university places expanded, the fee system and the compartmentalisation of subjects (turning universities into sausage factories of knowledge) led to fewer education opportunities and less social mobility. This is the seeming paradox of meritocracy. The word and the concept behind it was invented by the Labour philosopher Michael Young , who used the word in a pejorative sense. Merit in a class society is a retrospective judgment. Opportunities to succeed in a career or vocation etc tend to fall to those best placed to receive them. Money, class, power, however you want to put it, is capable of opening or closing doors to you. David Cameron described himself as “sharp-elbowed middle-class”, suggesting he had to struggle to get to where he is today, which is a gross insult to those who actually struggle in life. The idea that bankers should receive bonuses because they deserve them, while teachers, nurses and dustbin men should tighten their belts is offensive to many, but this is where so-called meritocracy gets you, the idea that financial reward is the same as just desert. Put in athletic terms, in the context of our society: You and I were born on the starting blocks, while David Cameron was born in the home straight. 

Sport, like all other aspects of culture, needs to be rescued from the bourgeoisie.